


Susurration

by NatureSerenity



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aromantic, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Asexuality, Coming Out, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 06:08:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2056743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NatureSerenity/pseuds/NatureSerenity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She feels broken, like something's missing, until she finds out there's been nothing wrong with her all along...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Susurration

"You’ll find the right person," they always tell her, accompanied by yet another damp pat to the shoulder, or cup of her cheek. "You won’t be alone forever." They don’t listen to her protests that it’s what she  _wants_. Their ears stop themselves up at even the mere suggestion that this girl, this eighteen-year-old girl with pretty blonde hair and her mother’s brown eyes, doesn’t want happily ever after. The prince can stay locked up in his castle, the knight can charge to some other princess’s rescue.

Her aunt whispers to her, with a knowing look, that it is okay to like other  _girls_ , too, but that’s the problem. She knows it’s okay. Her best friend confided in her three years ago that the only lips she ever wanted to kiss belonged to the head of the cheerleading squad, and she accepted it with equanimity (and waited in the parking lot to trip the cheerleader when she not only refused her friend’s tentative advances, but called her a dyke and threw a cup of water on her). She knows it’s okay. But she’s not attracted to  _anyone_ , and she never has been.

Butterflies in her tummy, the fizzy feeling that tingles through your veins when you see the one, the way the flickering campfire in your soul longs to rest at another’s…she has none of that, and she’s  _content_  with that, damn it, and why can’t everyone else be?

She tries to go all the way after graduation, in the woods behind the party. The boy has tousled hair and freckles spattering his cheeks and she supposes he’s attractive enough, but when he tries to unbutton her shirt and cup her breasts, she ends up freezing in place like a startled deer, and she can’t do it after all, and salty traces trickle down her cheeks later, when she is tucked up in her own bed, because she can’t even pretend.

When she goes to university, it’s the same thing wrapped up in ivy league halls and co-ed dorms. Be  _normal,_ why can’t you be  _normal_ , and she tries again. With a boy on the football team, whose kisses are always too rough, and who always smells like beer. With a girl from her English class who has very frizzy hair and wears too much pink lipstick, as if that will paper over her cracks. She can kiss them, and cuddle them, but when it comes to anything past that, she turns into that deer again, and her throat tightens and her bones shiver, and she can’t do it. And she’s branded frigid, but she can’t make herself care.

It’s not until third year she meets someone. An autumn-haired girl with black-framed glasses and an infectious laugh. She likes this girl, but not in  _that_  way, and this girl is content to hold hands with her on the way to dinner, and to watch Doctor Who in the dorm with a bowl of popcorn between them. And this girl whispers words into her ear, magical words that she’s never properly understood.

"You’re asexual, aren’t you," and this time, the words fit, and slide over her like a comforting blanket.  _Asexual, aromantic,_  yes, yes, the words are perfect soap bubbles, they slip and slide against her mind like overly enthusiastic cats, and it’s perfect.

Maybe she’s not broken after all.


End file.
